Zweimal in one day!

I hadn't written in ages and here I am, writing for the SECOND time today! Mostly it's because it's Friday, and I have no interest in doing homework or anything. Also, there are two orders of business which I find to be in dire need of discussion. One is the subway trains here. The other is the super exciting adventure that I undertook today.

The issue of the U-Bahn and S-Bahn is something I've intended to tell all of you about for a long time, but I keep forgetting. It is a totally new experience, and often quite unusual. For instance, the first order of business is the way the creepy ass way they check tickets. The way tickets work is not that you buy a ticket every time; everyone who lives here pretty much has a month pass for all the U-Bahn lines. We have a semester pass from Humboldt University to last us until December. But even though everyone has passes, it would be kind of impractical for everyone to have to show their ticket every time they need to get on a train. So nobody has a ticket out or has to show one to anybody at the stations or when they get on the trains, its just a constant unhindered bustling of people getting on and off at stations. But there's a catch. Every once in awhile when you get to a station, after the normal cluster of people get off and the new people get on, after the doors close and you're pulling away from the station, the ticket inspectors make themselves known. A typical scenario: the flashing lights signaling that the doors are closing have just gone off, the doors close, and the train starts going. All the sudden the 22 year old girl in a baggy sweatshirt with headphones in her ears steps out from the corner of one end of the train, and at the other end, a shabby looking man in jeans and a tanktop steps out from HIS corner. They both pull out the U-Bahn company ID's and say "DIE FAHRKARTE BITTE!" ("Your train passes please!") And then they move up and down the train, making everyone show their tickets. If you for some reason don't have one, then you have to pay 40 euros. They're done checking by the next stop, and they leave. It is CRAZY! They go out of their way to blend in and be sneaky so no one suspects that they're inspectors, and then out of nowhere they come out of the woodwork. It's pretty cool, but always a little bit frightening. Germans think nothing of it, but everyone in the program is genuinely creeped out after each time they get checked. I will never think it's totally normal when that happens.
Another thing that baffles me about the trains is the phenomenon of sleeping passengers. I have encountered these people on multiple occasions. These people are passed the hell out, I'm talking mouth open, head bobbing, iPod blasting in their ears. I always end up watching them rock back and forth and wonder, "How long have you been on this train? How far past your stop are you going to go before you wake up and realize where you are?" I always think that, and then I witness these people, when we reach a certain stop, suddenly wake from their dead sleep, get up and exit the train so calmly and unflustered that I have to believe it is their stop. I don't know how these people have mastered the art of train-sleeping, but I'm taken aback every time.
Last thing of importance about the trains is the rats/mice. I have yet to determine what they are. They are very small and look like mice to me, but their tails seem rattish. If you're picturing a New York subway type monster rodent creature, then that's not what you should be picturing. It's just every once in awhile if you're waiting for the subway to come and you watch the empty tracks, you see one of these little guys scurrying around (I've never seen more than one at a time). I find them to be endearing. The other day I watched one of them in the Mehringdamm station for about five minutes straight as he dragged a piece of crinkled paper across the gravel between the tracks. He just pulled it along, stopping every once in awhile to turn around and inspect it. I can't imagine what he planned to do with that piece of paper, so I like to think it was a little treasure.

Second order of business, and the real reason for writing this rambling entry after already having written today, is that this afternoon/evening I ventured to the Freie Universitaet Art History library in search of a book that I need for my art history midterm paper. I hopped on the U-Bahn and went up three stations (Free University is in Dahlem so it's close to me) to Podbielskiallee. When I got out of the station I could not believe my eyes. First of all, the day was gorgeous--cold and crisp and fallish with dark blue skies. The area was the prettiest I've seen in Berlin so far. It was residential, nothing but trees all with yellow and orange leaves, all the streets were narrow and cobblestone. I meandered along and eventually found the library, and although I had absolutely NO idea what the hell I was doing, I asked the front desk lady about five hundred obnoxious questions, found the book I needed plus another one, and made copies. Throughout all of this I resisted temptation and spoke nothing but German, and they only spoke German to me. This is kind of flattering because sometimes when Germans realize your German is not that great, they just start speaking English with you even if you're trying to speak German. When they actually speak German with you, then it either means they don't speak English (an unusual case) or they think your German is good enough to understand and deal with. I'm sure the lady was very annoyed with my library ignorance (everything's different!!) but she wasn't annoyed enough with my German to give up and speak English. I left there with my 75 pages of copies feeling quite proud of myself.

Along the lines of German, our excursion today was to the museum for German resistance to the Nazis. Our tour was in all German, and I understood pretty much everything. It was a good day for my language skills.